Wanna get your children future-ready? Get off to a great start with ChildFirst Pre-school, which has a unique curriculum that has coding thrown into the mix.
Parents, how’s this for a preschool that’s truly like no other? ChildFirst is Singapore’s first-ever trilingual preschool that offers a trilingual education in English, Chinese and Coding. Whilst coding technically isn’t a conversational language, it’s a digital language that helps with both physical and mental development. Students learn all about it with a brilliant iUnique curriculum that uses a combination of technology and AI — seriously, how cool is that!
Why coding?
The world is increasingly becoming digitised, and ChildFirst is pulling out all the stops in future-proofing its students. By starting coding young, students get to enhance their problem-solving skills, hone their creativity, and develop technological literacy.
Check out what ChildFirst has to say about incorporating coding into the curriculum:
Coding is incorporated into the school’s main core curriculum, helping them to build critical skills that will carry well into their adulthood. Instead of being daunted by AI, ChildFirst embraces it from the get-go, equipping students to understand and use AI appropriately. This manifests in the iUnique (“I am unique”) curriculum, which incorporates a mix of artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and multiple intelligences.
How do students learn coding at ChildFirst?
It’s all about building the fundamentals of coding — in a fun and engaging way! First, students build pre-coding skills, and learn coding vocabulary through play. We’re talking about learning how to create simple patterns, grasping instructions and directions, and grasping sequencing skills.
From Nursery 2 onwards, students will deep-dive further into coding. And, contrary to popular misconception, this doesn’t require the use of screens! They first learn to break down a coding problem into a sequence of steps, and they do so in fun ways like moving their bodies to mimic the directions. They’ll subsequently learn to program a robot that uses a tap pen controller.
In Kindergarten, students will then learn coding with the use of a tablet. This is the highlight for many, as they’ll get to navigate the robot through an exciting obstacle course! Eventually, they’ll even learn to build and programme their own robots too.
How is this interwoven into the bilingual curriculum?
Think: in-house-developed AI Chinese and Math apps, a novel word recognition programme, animated stories, and more. All these tools help to frame AI in a fun and relatable way, allowing students to seamlessly integrate it into their everyday learning. Collecting stickers whilst playing games has proven to be a real highlight among the students at ChildFirst! There’s even an age-appropriate AI-generative chat powered by ChatGPT.
At the end of the day, constant exposure is key. To ensure full immersion, students go through a half-day of Chinese, and a half-day of English — interspersed with coding throughout. Parents, if you’re curious about your child’s development in school, enjoy peace of mind with personalised progress reports, revision updates, and more.
Read to future-proof your child? Tour ChildFirst’s facilities and meet the teachers for yourself at its Open House, happening on 18 January 2025, 10am to 12pm. To register your interest, drop a Whatsapp to 8121 2299.
This post is in partnership with ChildFirst Pre-school.
